Bulletins and News Discussion for December 11th to December 17th, 2023 - What's Yours is Mine - COTW: Canada
Bulletins and News Discussion for December 11th to December 17th, 2023 - What's Yours is Mine - COTW: Canada
Image is of the Cobre Panama open-pit copper mine, located 120 kilometers west of Panama City.
Canada is a prolific mining country, hosting many of the world's top mining corporations. Some of its extraction is local - for example, Saskatchewan is the world's largest producer of potash, a critical agricultural nutrient. Much of the extraction is abroad. Naturally, this means that Canada has cut a bloody, but often ignored, path through the global periphery, extracting minerals and causing environmental degradation.
A notable recent example is that of the Cobre Panama copper mine, which is owned by First Quantum Minerals, one of the largest mining companies in Canada. The company earned $10 billion in revenue in 2022, of which the Cobre Panama mine generated $1 billion. Protests in Panama about this mine have gone on for over a decade, urging for a greater share of the profits, protection of indigenous people, and stronger environmental protections. Canada has maintained a stoney silence (pun somewhat intended) on these movements.
On October 20th, the president of Panama, Cortizo, renewed the company's mining concession for 20 years, after a halt in production since the end of 2022 due to negotiations and reform. Everybody hated this. In October, protestors took to the streets in sufficient numbers that Cortizo was forced to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed. This was immediately cut down, but the government decided to invalidate the new concession anyway in late November, calling it unconstitutional, and closing down the mine.
First Quantum Minerals has lost about half its market value since October. Various international banks have said that Panama could lose its investment-grade credit rating next year due to the income hit - the mine generated 5% of its GDP. The international arbitration process which First Quantum has initiated against Panama could last years.
The book Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination handles Canada's role as an imperialist, anti-indigenous, extractive state throughout its history, and is on our geopolitical reading list.
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Your Friday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Saturday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
The Country of the Week is Canada! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
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⚡️| 🌍 BIG SUMMARY of all resistance operations today, December 14, against US-israeli forces
— 🇾🇪 Yemeni Armed Forces:
🔻Carried out a military operation against the container ship "Mercy Gibraltar," headed towards israeli ports, targeting it with a suicide drone, causing a direct hit.
🔻Successfully prevented several ships from heading towards the israeli entity within the past 48 hours.
— 🇵🇸 Al-Qassam Brigades:
🔻(Partially) destroyed 25 Merkava tanks, 8 APCs & 3 military vehicles in various combat axes.
🔻Sniped 4 Zionist soldiers northwest of Gaza City.
🔻Targeted military field command rooms in the southern axis of Gaza City with short-range rockets and heavy-caliber mortars.
🔻Shelled army incursions in the eastern & northern axes of Khan Yunis with heavy-caliber mortars.
🔻Shelled army incursions in the eastern and northwestern axes of Gaza City with mortars.
🔻Targeted an IOF patrol unit with an anti-personnel explosive, causing casualties among them, in the Shujaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City.
🔻Killed at least 10 IOF officers/soldiers in an operation on an IOF infantry force in Hassanin Street in Shujaiya area, using powerful explosive devices.
🔻Targeted an IOF infantry force, inside a building with TBG explosives, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.
— 🇵🇸 Al-Quds Brigades:
🔻Shelled military concentrations east of Zaytoun with heavy-caliber mortars.
🔻Shelled military gatherings in the "Natsarim" axis with a barrage of 60mm caliber mortars.
🔻(Partially) destroyed 6 Merkava tanks, 2 APCs & 1 D9-military bulldozer in various combat zones.
🔻Shelled military concentrations in the southwestern axis of "Natsarim" with heavy-caliber mortars.
🔻Sniped a Zionist soldier in the axis of Sheikh Radwan west of Gaza City.
🔻Shelled military concentrations east of the central governorate with a barrage of mortars.
🔻Shelled military concentrations around the Al-Zalal Mosque in the axis east of Khan Yunis with a barrage of 60mm mortars.
🔻In a joint operation with the Al-Qassam Brigades, ambushed a building where IOF forces took refuge, resulting in 6 casualties between dead & injured in the Shujaiya axis east of Gaza.
— 🇵🇸 Martyr Omar Al-Qassem forces:
🔻Clashed & ambushed IOF forces in the axes east of Shujaiya, causing many casualties leading to the IOF admitting its losses after it became too much.
🔻Clashed IOF forces & vehicles on Street 5
— 🇵🇸 Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades
🔻Clashed with IOF forces in various axes
— 🇵🇸 Mujahideen Brigades:
🔻Intense clashes with IOF forces in the Shujaiya axes.
— 🟡 Hezbollah:
🔻Targeted an IOF army gathering near Shomera barracks with appropriate weapons.
🔻Targeted Yiftah barracks and a group of IOF soldiers & militants vehicles in its vicinity with appropriate weapons.
🔻Targeted a group of israeli soldiers near Hunin with appropriate weapons.
— 🇮🇶 Islamic Resistance in Iraq:
🔻Targeted the US base in Shaddadi, south of Al-Hasakah in Syria, with a suicide drone, causing a direct hit.
fucking a, 31 merkava tanks in one day!
That's like... a lot. How the fuck do you manage to lose so many tanks to guerillas? The zionist tank builders and/or soldiers must be amazingly bad at their jobs.
It seems like these guerrillas were particularly prepared for a careless armored assault. This was very well-planned, they knew the merkava would be at the front of the aggressive retaliation and planned accordingly (Yassin-105/Jihad devices)
Long live the fighters!